Book description
Out of This Furnace is Thomas Bell’s most compelling achievement. Its story of three generations of an immigrant Slovak family -- the Dobrejcaks -- still stands as a fresh and extraordinary accomplishment.
The novel begins in the mid-1880s with the naive blundering career of Djuro Kracha. It tracks his arrival…
Why read it?
1 author picked Out of This Furnace as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
When workers organize, it’s not only for themselves and for generations to come, but also a response to suffering by generations past.
Thomas Bell (born Adalbert Belacyk) brings this to light in his saga of Slovak-American life in steel town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in a family much like the one at the novel’s center. The story stretches from the 1880s into the mid-1930s, culminating with the unionization of U.S. Steel, a megacorporation that had previously crushed all efforts at labor organizing.
No book offers a more intimate view of what it took to bring this company…
From Priscilla's list on labor history bringing personal stories to life.
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These Blue Mountains
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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